On September 20, 2016 the news hit that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were filing for divorce. On top of that, Brangelina fans were also shocked by rumors that Brad may have had an affair with Allied co-star Marion Cotillard.
With news sites and social media awash with these stories, our friends at Refinery29 figured it was only natural that fans would start searching Pornhub for anything related to Brad’s love interests. Indeed, our statisticians found that on September 20th, searches for Marion Cotillard jumped by 579% and Angelina Jolie by 58%. By September 21st searches continued to grow, up 1218% for Marion and 129% for Angelina.
On an average day, Pornhub users search for Angelina Jolie several thousand times – making her consistently one of our top 20 (non-pornstar) “people” searches. Marion’s daily searches are usually one tenth that of Angelina’s, so 1218% represents a significant increase in interest, but Angelina still beat her in raw searches.
Celebrity news stories often cause an increase in searches on Pornhub. We’ve found that searches for Kim Kardashian increased significantly following several of her life events, and even 50s blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe saw increased searches after her biopic film aired on TV.